


A Gabriel by Any Other Name

by AceOfSpades22



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gore, M/M, Post-Canon, Sad Ending, Wraith!Gabriel, monster!Gabriel, post fall of Overwatch, slight body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21898954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceOfSpades22/pseuds/AceOfSpades22
Summary: Jack Morrison is not going to give up. He's tracked Gabriel this far, and damn it he's going to finish this once and for all... The Reaper has to pay for his crimes, and if he has to sit around and wait until he shows himself again, so be it.Set after the events of the Mercy skin challenge short story.
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18
Collections: Reaper76 Free For All Secret Santa 2019





	A Gabriel by Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [passeridae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/passeridae/gifts).



Training as a soldier had never prepared Jack Morrison for the bone deep exhaustion he’d face for the majority of his golden, and waning, years. Forcing his pre SEP body through months of grueling testing, medical experimentation, physical and emotional conditioning, and governmental, patriotic brainwashing disguised as propaganda, had never prepared him for the burning, aching drive he’d feel in pursuing the last piece of himself he desperately wanted to preserve.

The last piece of Golden Child 76. The last inkling of that noble Strike Commander, tucked away as it was, hid somewhere deep inside the black twisted heart of the enemy. To truly lay Jack Morrison, as he had been, to rest. Reyes finally needed to fall. And he’d be the one to put a few pulse munitions through his wispy skull.

Ana, for her credit, had stuck with him through most all of it. Bless her heart, she tried. He couldn’t truly be mad she’d abandoned him now that they were so close to finally putting the old Reaper to rest. Bastard Reyes that he was. Jack still couldn’t wrap his brain around the fact the man had caused as much chaos as he had.

And that wasn’t even considering the pre-fall bullshit.

The mere thought of it all left his jaw clenching and his hands curling into tight, angry fists.

“ _Gabriel._ ” The familiar way his lips and tongue curled around the name left a sick pit in his stomach and bile rising in his throat, and though the sun had not quite cleared the edge of the apartment roof he’d claimed as his base for the time being, he got to his feet to shake off the roiling fury that threatened to build.

Stretching his stiff limbs, he snagged one of the bottles of water Ana had so graciously left him with, swished a bit of the liquid around his mouth and spat it out over the roof edge, splashed a bit of the water onto his face to more properly wake up, and drank the remainder before snagging onto his rifle and walking toward the opposite edge of the roof. This sort of gruff morning had become routine over the past few days. Wake from a broken sleep, curse Gabriel’s name, get angry, get up, waist water on a semblance of keeping sort of hygienic in the dusty wasteland that was Egypt… and settle back down on his stomach, rifle positioned to shoot and visor quietly searching for signs of the one person that could take the weight of his burdens from his shoulders.

It was so much easier when he’d thought the man was dead. In death, at least Gabriel was a hero, untarnished by the iron grip of Talon. In life, as the Reaper, he was both villain and pawn to the cruel game of chess Talon was forcing on the world.

The way he saw it, Talon had been spooked out of the area by Helix core and the return of a few decrepit Overwatch heroes. Angela, for all her talk of joining the recall, had insisted on clearing the city first, Ana had abandoned him three days ago to assist in evacuation efforts. An empty city and an unprotected omnium…. It was only a matter of time before the Reaper returned to get the God-AI he assumed Talon wanted their bloodstained hands on.

It was a waiting game, something Strike Commander Morrison had never been good at. That’d been one of the many reasons Blackwatch had been manned by someone outside of himself. Stealth missions and cover-ops were not his style. He’d always found it easier to fight his way through his enemies than to wait in the shadows and outmaneuver them. Unfortunately, waiting was a game Soldier: 76 was forcibly familiar with.

On his stomach, he scanned the empty streets, his tactical visor set to look for any sort of heat signature above the ambient air temperature. Over the course of three days, the city had gone from bustling, to vacant save a few rodents, a stray dog or two and a few dozen cats. Nothing human. Not that Reyes would show up as a human. Like their previous encounters, he expected the man to appear as little more than a cloud of smoke.

Settling in, he resigned himself to another day of waiting. How long would it take for Reyes to return to carry out his failed mission?

Somewhere around mid-morning, hours into another day of waiting, the incessant pressure on his bladder he’d been ignoring for an unhealthy amount of time reached a critical level, and with a muttered curse, he got up, shook off the layer of sand and grit the wind had left coating his body, tightened his grip on his pulse rifle and headed for the ladder that would take him down into the street. Better to relieve himself now. It would be easier to focus without intrusive thoughts of his pitifully mundane needs, and he’d take the short opportunity to stretch his stiff legs.

Quick to relieve himself, he kept one hand on his weapon, a skill he had learned in his SEP days. There was nothing quite like needing his rifle while being indecent, not that he’d needed it this time.

Dirt crunched beneath his boots as he walked down the abandoned streets, deafening in the silence. The wind had stopped sometime while he’d slept, as if it too was holding its breath in preparation for battle. He almost missed the maddening feeling of grit blowing constantly into his mouth and eyes.

The omnium loomed on his right, vacant of even the Helix Security team. If he’d been a god fearing man the evil that rolled from its black, empty recesses would have given him chills, but all he could see while looking at it was an empty temple.

An empty temple... with eyes peering from the darkness.

“Shit...” He swore, flipping the tactical visor back down over his eyes and pressing the button on the side, heart racing as the distinctive, vaporous form Reyes chose to take these days displayed across the screen on the inside, each cell considerably hotter than the air around it.

“Gabriel you coward!” he shouted, anger and something else he didn’t dare acknowledge burning in his tone as he glared out at the slowly solidifying form of the Reaper as he stepped out from the shadows.

He drew up his rifle and fired a trio of rockets from the underside of the square barrel, followed by a few shots for good measure, not that it would do any good. He knew when he’d fired them they’d pass harmlessly through a not yet formed torso.

“If only Overwatch could see you now! How far you’ve fallen! What are you willing to sacrifice to fill this sick vengeance?” He continued, shooting again as Gabriel advanced. “ _Say something!_ ”

The silence unnerved him, and it was all he could do to stay rooted to the spot as Reyes broke apart in a cloud of black smoke and streamed toward him, solidifying mere inches from his face.

“Say... something. You owe me that much.”

Vacant eyes stared out, just barely visible, from the bone white mask that concealed the monstrous form of Gabriel’s face. 

“I am willing to destroy, _everything_.” Gabriel whispered, “and I will.”

His voice was gruff as it filtered through the voice modifier attached to the mask. The modifier that, had it been under different circumstances in a different world, Jack would have scoffed. He’d have called the man out for trying to be edgy and mysterious.

It only chilled him now. Jack wanted to shout, demand to know what happened to Gabriel’s unnerving sense of duty and greater good. When had the man stopped caring about doing what was right, regardless of the cost?

With a snarl, Jack headbutted Gabriel’s masked face, sent a kick to his chest and put distance between them, unnerved by his closeness.

Barely moving, Gabriel didn’t react to the assault. Something that even days prior would have elicited an immediate counterattack, now was met with steady, amused eyes.

Gabriel was toying with him.

Jack fired three shots. Nothing. He sent out more rockets. Nothing. Embolded by the lack of action, he went so far as to charge the Reaper and strike him in the chest with the butt of his rifle. Aside from a soft ‘oof’ as the air was driven from Gabriel’s lungs? Nothing.

“Your attempt is futile.” Gabriel said. His voice, modified as it was, dripped with amusement. “This body is already dead. I have sucked the last morsels of sustenance from within. These attacks I’ve spearheaded have been all about finding a proper host. The slaughter of your precious agents in hiding is nothing more than a necessary search in finding a new model to cruise around in. It’s unfortunate. I enjoyed Gabriel.”

Jack paused, bewildered. For a moment he cast about wildly, checking the color of the sky, the appearance of the buildings, even his own hands to ensure this encounter wasn’t some odd fever dream brought on by the Egypt sun. Confirming he was woefully trapped in reality, he lowered his rifle and lifted the visor from his eyes to glare with incredulity.

“What the hell are you talking about?!” Jack asked as he took the bait so obviously thrown at him. “Have you lost your god damn mind? Is _that_ what this is all about?”

“On the contrary. I am completely, truly, and utterly sane. One of few creatures in this forsaken world able to claim such a feat.” Gabriel said. The dry sense of amusement never left his voice, even as he gripped Jack by the collar of his jacket and hauled him up six inches from the ground.

Inches from Jack’s face, he chuckled, low and sinister and allowed the mask at his face to dissipate, revealing the grizzled, visage of a man turned monster. It was the second time he’d seen Gabriel’s face since he’d found out the man was still alive after the fall, but he swore the first time he’d seen it it’d seemed more... human.

Jack shivered as the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, gut instinct kicking in. The face was not his lover’s. There was not an ounce of Gabriel left in the scarred, rotten carapace. Even his _eyes_ weren’t the same hazel color that’d look down on him in the middle of the night with such warm, teasing love.

The arms that gripped his collar, bleached white with a lack of blood, were not the same strong, caramel colored arms that were unfailing as they held him up in the shadows against the backlash of world governments, news stations and media alike. 

This was not his Gabriel.

“It took you this long to realize, Strike Commander?” Gabriel—no, not Gabriel, the thing possessing his lifeless corpse, said with a chuckle, and it was all Jack could do not to wretch as he slammed the heels of his palms into the thing’s chest and fall back against the dusty ground.

“What are you?” He whispered as he stared up at the creature that loomed over him, a thousand questions buzzing through his mind.

“Strictly speaking? I’m a wraith. A spirit that can not exist without a host and let me tell you. Your Gabriel made a fine, strong host. I enjoyed eating his dead flesh from the inside out to make space for myself.” The wraith grinned, face stretching in a horrible, inhumanly wide grimace as he loomed over Jack.

“How… How long have you been… When did he die?” Jack whispered, swaying even as he leaned against the dirt. He’d gone through the pain of losing Gabe once. Discovering the man was alive, even committing the atrocities he was with Talon, had given him the first true flickering rays of hope he’d felt since Overwatch’s official disbandment.

The wraith chuckled once more, clicked his stolen tongue and loomed ever close. Clawed fingers wrapped around Jack’s face and putrid breath ghosted over his cheeks seconds before cold, dead lips pressed against his.

Jack gasped as the air was sucked from his lungs and the hot grit beneath him faded away into a pit of empty darkness. He screamed for a moment, the sound whipped away as he simultaneously fell down and flew up until he slammed hard into a balcony. The sound of gunfire met his ears even over the ringing of his bewildered panic, along with an all too familiar tight, angry shout.

“Jesse! Damn it McCree keep up!” Gabriel shouted, and from where Jack stood on the ghostly balcony, he could just make out his lover, scarred, bleeding and pissed all to hell as he yanked a delirious looking cowboy out of the way of a Talon heavy charging straight for them with both Gatling guns whirring in preparation to fire.

“Gabriel! Behind you!” Jack called, fear in his eye as a sniper lined up a shot in the background. He swung down off the balcony, only to give a choked sob of frustration as he landed back on the very platform he’d just left. The deep, rumbling chuckles of the wraith came at him from every direction and he glared angrily at the sky.

“You bastard! Let me get to him!” Jack demanded, trying, and failing once more to get down off the balcony. His knees buckled in relief as the sniper missed its shot as a silent, crimson eyed ninja dashed forward and deflected the round off his blade, giving Gabriel and Jesse enough time to disappear into a bullet riddled building.

“Fool. He can not hear you. Nothing you do here will change the outcomes of the past.” The wraith chuckled softly. “You can only watch what happened.”

Jack bit his and clutched white knuckled at the balcony ledge, heart in his throat as he stared down at the scene before them.

“This... This is Rialto. Isn’t it.” He whispered, knowing somehow that the wraith would hear his soft spoken words, not that he responded to him with anything more than a hum of acknowledgement.

He watched as Gabriel tore through wave after wave of Talon grunts and special elite soldiers, looking like the angel of death he’d always been, surrounded as he was in a halo of shotgun shells. There was no sign of the drop ship, and the forces just kept coming.

“M’ outta ammo, boss. This ain’t lookin’ to good.” Jesse called out, a flash bang lighting up the dark sky as he rolled backward, keeping his back to a pillar in a poor attempt not to be snuck up on.

Genji, silent and deadly as he was, gave a furious swear, a green spirit bursting forward from his blade as he cut through a whole dropship’s worth of grunts. Jack watched as the angry cyborg slice and diced his way through to Jesse and began defending him with every ounce of strength he had left.

“Your ship better be coming soon! I’m out of the nanite healing spray and the tank can’t just magically make more.” Moira shouted as she phase walked to Gabriel’s side.

Talon soldiers were closing in around them on all sides, and while Jack could see Fio in the Blackwatch aircraft coming in hot, he knew it’d be too late for them all. As did Gabriel. Jack could almost see the defeat in Gabriel’s body in the way his shoulders slumped as if the entire weight of the world had just crashed down on top of him.

“Get to the rooftop. Fio! Land on the roof of the restaurant, get the bay door down and open, I’ll handle these assholes to give you guys enough time.” Gabriel ordered, voice gruff as he gripped the Hellfires tightly and grit his teeth together.

“You dumb bastard don’t do it…” Jack whispered, rooted to the spot with horror. He couldn’t hear Jesse’s response over the pounding of his own heart, but didn’t miss the way the kid hugged Gabriel tightly for a fraction of a second before heading for the stairs.

To Gabriel’s credit, he fought with a newfound ferocity that left Jack’s heart aching. Any Talon soldier stupid enough to try to pursue the fleeing Blackwatch agents was met with a shotgun blast to the back. Gabriel was a whirlwind, shooting, dodging and shouting out insults as he did everything in his power to keep the attention focused on him.

Jack lost count of how many times his Gabriel spun in a blossoming circle of carnage, mowing down targets at random in his desperation, and while he obviously tried to fight his way to the stairs, by the time Jesse, Moira and Genji were escaping into the ship, he was overrun.

“Take off, now! That’s an order, solider!” Gabriel demanded, body riddled full of bullet holes as he leaned against the pillar, all but forgotten as the Talon grunts realized their mistake and tried in vain to get to the ship before it could take off. Sick bastards didn’t even have the decency to kill Gabriel then and there in an act of mercy.

Instead he was left to bleed to death, alone and miserable.

“Gabriel... My Gabriel...” Jack whispered, feeling sick as he watched his lover’s suffering. He could hear the sound of his labored, rattling breath. He’d never wanted so badly for someone’s breath to be their last. A sick feeling overcame him as a now familiar black mist leaked out from the shadows and caressed Gabriel’s pale cheek before flooding into his body.

From there, the memory faded away just as Gabriel’s broken body got back to its feet, and even as he faded back into reality, the cold, dead eyes of the Reaper stared directly at him with a look of unfiltered glee.

Jack gasped like a fish out of water as he was thrust back into reality. Hatred boiled in his blood as he got to his feet, and with a cry of mingled rage and grief, he struck out at the wraith’s chest.

“Bastard. Give him back. Give me my Gabriel back!” Jack roared through clenched teeth. It all made sense. He’d thought things had changed between them after the Venice Incident because Gabriel had realized how badly he’d fucked up. He’d thought it’d been his lover’s crippling guilt that had destroyed their relationship.

But he’d been wrong. The last few years of Overwatch’s existence, Gabriel had denied his touch, his attempts at apology and finding some sort of futile solution... because his Gabriel had been dead. His Gabriel had been nothing more than a walking corpse being feasted on by some smoke monster of nightmares.

“Even I can’t bring back the dead, Jack.” The wraith hummed as he caressed Jack’s cheek, amused by clean trails the old vigilante’s tears cut down his dirt stained cheeks. “But, allow me to provide you with my solution.”

For a moment, the wraith winked out of existence entirely, cells dissipating save a few stray clumps of black. Jack couldn’t hardly bring himself to care where the wraith had gone to, too locked in his newfound grief to care.

Perhaps he should have. He might have noticed the way one of Gabriel’s Hellfires materialized and pressed point blank to his spine.

The shot rang in Jack’s ears. He never even saw it coming. His vision went white, and the pain didn’t register. Not at first. Not until after he hit the ground and coughed up a mouthful of scarlet. The creature stood over him, twisting his Gabriel’s beautiful face into a malicious grimace, one that would haunt him in the few precious remaining seconds of his life.

It hurt to breathe. The effort of trying to replace the blood building in his lungs with air was too great a struggle. For a moment, he watched through quickly hazing eyes as the creature tore out of Gabriel’s body, wispy fingers ripping open his mouth in a larger than life smile that sent inky drops of what could have only been the monster’s blood to the dirt to mingle with his own.

“Don’t worry, Strike Commander. Your soul will stay with me, always. Gabriel’s did. You have to die, don’t you understand?” The wraith chuckled as he reached a black, wispy tendril toward Jack and caressed his pale, greying cheek. “About a decade. It’s a shame super soldiers aren’t created all the time. Gabriel’s body was strong... But even the strongest things weaken over time... Your body will be no exception, but in the mean time, who better to destroy the remainder of humanity through killing off the last of Earth’s little freedom fighters... than you? Sweet dreams.”

As the wraith finished speaking, smoke began to pour into Jack’s body. It filled his nose, his ears, his eyes, even his mouth, regardless of the way blood leaked in a steady stream past his lips.

Jack struggled. He tried to fight, he tried to move. To scream. To shove the wraith back, but he’d lost too much blood. He could feel himself dying, and it was all he could do to get out a weak, gurgled sound of protest before the last true breath that’d ever reach his body fell from his lips and his form stilled... For a moment.

With a disembodied chuckle, the wraith invaded Jack’s fresh corpse and savored the strength that poured into his vaporous form as he joined with the dying cells of Jack’s body. With a jerky movement, he forced the broken body to its feet and gave a cackle of victory.

Jack had never been prepared for the bone deep exhaustion of damnation, nor the terror that came with trying to scream from his own lips as a multi-hundred year old wraith monster possessed his dead corpse and lifted the near mummified, rotten body of his lover, dead ten years, with his own hands.

All that bullshit with Talon. It’s hadn’t been Gabriel. It’d been the Reaper.

“The Reaper is dead, Jack... What kind of monster shall we be instead?”

**Author's Note:**

> Dear passeridae, 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this! Sorry it wasn't quite the djinn story you wanted... I felt bad trying to write something about an Islamic spirit! Wraith Gabriel will just have to do, I hope? In any case, Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays! 
> 
> To anyone else that read this, hope you enjoyed it! Next thing I write they'll have to be happy old gays.


End file.
